Persepolis

The chapter opens with Satrapi’s father reading the news that the US Embassy is now occupied by fundamentalist students, making it impossible to get a visa to the United States. Not long after, it is announced that universities have been closed and schools will be shut down to revise the textbooks and curriculum, which are deemed “too decadent.” Satrapi’s mother fears they will force all women to wear the veil, and Satrapi fears she will no longer be able to attend college one day.

Satrapi’s mother’s car breaks down, and when her family picks her up, she is terrified and crying. She tells them a man said, “[W]omen like [her] should be pushed up against a wall and fucked. And then thrown in the garbage” (74). This rattles her so much that she takes to her bed for a few days. The veil is enforced in public, although some women let a few strands of hair show as a sign of rebellion. Men are told to wear beards and not shave and are forced to wear long-sleeved shirts and no neckties, which are seen as Western. Satrapi’s parents remind her to lie at school and tell others that they pray multiple times a day.